small sample issues for microarray-based classification小样本问题芯片分类.pdf

Comparative and Functional Genomics Comp Funct Genom 2001; 2: 28–34. Review Article Small sample issues for microarray-based classification Edward R. Dougherty* Department of Electrical Engineering, Texas AM University, College Station, TX, USA Abstract *Correspondence to: E. R. Dougherty, Department of In order to study the molecular biological differences between normal and diseased tissues, Electrical Engineering, Texas it is desirable to perform classification among diseases and stages of disease using AM University, College Station, microarray-based gene-expression values. Owing to the limited number of microarrays TX 77843-3128, USA. typically used in these studies, serious issues arise with respect to the design, performance E-mail: e-dougherty@ and analysis of classifiers based on microarray data. This paper reviews some fundamental issues facing small-sample classification: classification rules, constrained classifiers, error estimation and feature selection. It discusses both unconstrained and constrained classifier design from sample data, and the contributions to classifier error from constrained optimization and lack of optimality owing to design from sample data. The difficulty with estimating classifier error when confined to small samples is addressed, particularly estimating the error from training data. The impact of small samples on the ability to include more than a few variables as classifier features is explaine